or your
services in putting us back, is it?" he asked coolly.

Arthur turned and faced him. His face began to flush slowly. Van
Deventer put up one hand.

"I beg your pardon. I see."

"We aren't settling the things we came here for," Estelle
interrupted.

She had noted the threat of friction and hastened to put in a
diversion. Arthur relaxed.

"I think that as a beginning," he suggested, "we'd better get
sleeping arrangements completed. We can get everybody together
somewhere, I dare say, and then secure volunteers for the work."

"Right." Van Deventer was anxious to make amends for his blunder
of a moment before. "Shall I send the bank watchmen to go on each
floor in turn and ask everybody to come down-stairs?"

"You might start them," Arthur said. "It will take a long time
for every one to assemble."

Van Deventer spoke into the telephone on his desk. In a moment he
hung up the receiver.

"They're on their way," he said.

Arthur was frowning to himself and scribbling in a note-book.

"Of course," he announced abstractedly, "the pressing problem
is food. We've quite a number of fishermen, and a few hunters.
We've got to have a lot of food at once, and everything considered,
I think we'd better count on the fishermen. At sunrise we'd better
have some people begin to dig bait and wake our anglers. They'd
better make their tackle to-night, don't you think?"

There was a general nod.

"We'll announce that, then. The fishermen will go to the river under
guard of the men we have who can shoot. I think what Indians there
are will be much too frightened to try to ambush any of us, but we'd
better be on the safe side. They'll keep together and fish at nearly
the same spot, with our hunters patrolling the woods behind them,
taking pot-shots at game, if they see any. The fishermen should make
more or less of a success, I think. The Indians weren't extensive
fishers that I ever heard of, and the river ought fairly to swarm
with fish."

He closed his note-book.

"How many weapons can we count on altogether?" Arthur asked Van
Deventer.

"In the bank, about a dozen riot-guns and half a dozen repeating
rifles. Elsewhere I don't know. Forty or fifty men said they had
revolvers, though."

"We'll give revolvers to the men who go with the fishermen. The
Indians haven't heard firearms and will run at the report, even if
they dare attack our men."

"We can send out the gun-armed men as hunters," some one suggested